Magni Formica Laboris

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly , so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

These are all from this  which I read over three days last week. Nearly one-fourth of all white Southerners owned slaves, and upon their backs the economic basis of America—and much of the Atlantic world—was erected. Do not underestimate the role European powers played in the slave trade . In 1650, Virginia mandated that “all persons except Negroes” were to carry arms. In 1664, Maryland mandated that any Englishwoman who married a slave must live as a slave of her husband’s master. In 1705, the Virginia assembly passed a law allowing for the dismemberment of unruly slaves—but forbidding masters from whipping “a Christian white servant naked, without an order from a justice of the peace.” In that same law, the colony mandated that “all horses, cattle, and hogs, now belonging, or that hereafter shall belong to any slave” be seized and sold off by the local church, the profits used to support “the poor of the said parish.”  Virginia. Maryland. More reason to finish The Internal Enem

Looking forward to reading his new book. David Brooks was not so pleased with it . I think one commenter (Timmy) was onto something when s/he said that Coates's book could not "penetrate David's heavily fortified worldview": For Brooks, it all comes down to “individual choices.” It is what permits Brooks to willfully ignore Coates’ revelations of the structural problems of violence, poverty, and prejudice that plague the nation.  I don't necessarily agree with Timmy on this as I think Brooks's points are worth more consideration than that, but I was interested to think that so many of today's polemics are subsumed under the problem of free will. From what I've read of Brooks, he certainly is concerned more than most about "individual choices", which is a line of argument I'm used to hearing conservatives make. Is he then held to a firm belief in free will, whereas those concerned more with the effects of "structural" forces